Blockchain

If you’re a disciple, this new dimension is the future. If you’re a skeptic, this upside-down world is just a modern Ponzi scheme that’s going to end badly—and the recent “crypto winter” is evidence of its long-overdue ending. But crypto has dug itself into finance, into technology, and into our heads. And if crypto isn’t going away, we’d better attempt to understand it.

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an emerging form of legal structure that has no central governing body and whose members share a common goal to act in the best interest of the entity. Popularized through cryptocurrency enthusiasts and blockchain technology, DAOs are used to make decisions in a bottom-up management approach.

A smart contract, the result of an evolution of blockchain technology, is the latest buzzword in the property tech world. It has become a go-to solution in the real estate businesses, looking for transparency and security for everyone engaged in a binding agreement.

For financial service companies, this technology could be a path to faster and cheaper transactions, automated contracts, and greater security. Although blockchain technology still has a long way to go for widespread adoption, it's already being used by quite a few financial institutions.

While this emerging technology could help level the playing field for businesses of all sizes or enable greater financial inclusion, it also faces some challenges and poses some risks to the consumers and businesses that hope to use it.

In an ideal world, patent owners, law firms, companies, service providers and global patent offices would be communicating across a single, unified platform — but up until 2019, that didn’t exist. Patent ownership had to be tracked through heaps of complex paperwork for millions of patents, resulting in a great deal of money lost on these assets.

Blockchain technology has fundamentally changed the way financial institutions are exchanging value and building market infrastructure. Here’s a closer look at how this new technology is transforming capital markets and the specific benefits for a wide range of market participants.